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China shares sights and sounds of its rover’s first moves on Mars

Back in May, China became just the third nation to land on the surface of Mars as it touched down with its Tianwen-1 probe. Packed aboard was the country’s first interplanetary rover, named Zhurong, which can be seen and heard making its very movements on the Red Planet in newly released recordings.

China’s Tianwen-1 mission set off for Mars last July and came to land on a plain in the planet’s northern hemisphere called Utopia Planitia following a 10-month journey. The Zhurong rover remained aboard the lander module for around a week surveying its surroundings and checking its instruments, before rolling down to the dusty surface to begin its explorations.

Recordings gathered by the China National Space Administration and shared by state-funded broadcaster CCTV show the rover’s start to life on Mars in intriguing new light. The first includes the first audio collected by a Chinese Mars rover, with an onboard recording device capturing the sounds as its engine was started, of the Martian winds and of the machinations of the robot as it made its way down to the surface.

Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo ship departs space station to begin new mission in orbit

The S.S. Katherine Johnson will then safely fall to Earth.


A Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft successfully undocked from the International Space Station Tuesday (June 29) at 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT), more than four months after it arrived in orbit.

The undocking aired live on NASA TV, with the spacecraft separating from the orbital outpost right on time, enabling the craft to begin a secondary mission before its planned fiery demise.

Wow! NASA photographer spots space station crossing the sun during spacewalk (video)

The mosaic image is a composition of seven subsequent frames taken from Nellysford, Virginia, as the space station traversed the face of the sun at the speed of roughly 5 miles per second, which is about 18000 mph (29000 kph), according to a NASA photo description.

The six-hour and 45-minute spacewalk was the third for Pesquet and Kimbrough in less than two weeks as they completed work on augmenting the space station’s power systems. The iROSA panel deployed on Friday was the second of six new panels to be installed at the station.

Friday’s extravehicular activity (EVA) positioned the second iROSA opposite the first on the far left, or port side of the space station’s backbone truss. Now both the 2B and 4B power channels on the port 6 (P6) truss have the new arrays deployed.

SpaceX delays rare-trajectory Cape Canaveral launch to this week

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – SpaceX is targeting no earlier than this week for its upcoming Falcon 9 launch from Florida, a rare polar mission that will see the rocket pivot south and hug the state’s east coast, according to News 6 partner Florida Today.

The company on Friday confirmed teams were targeting no earlier than 2:56 p.m. Tuesday, June 29, for the 230-foot rocket’s flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The mission named Transporter-2 was originally slated to fly from Launch Complex 40 on Friday, June 25.

“This mission will launch 88 spacecraft to orbit and more customer mass than SpaceX’s previous dedicated rideshare mission,” SpaceX said Friday.